Riptide Rentboys

by Heidi Belleau

  Swallowing his apprehension, he pushed himself off the wall and went. He stayed out of arm’s reach, though, stuffing his hands into his pockets in the hopes he looked undecided rather than timid. Weasel wasn’t alone: another man sat in the driver’s seat, heavyset, like maybe he used to play high school football but was all beer gut now. Looked like a lot of Sean’s father’s friends, when he thought about it. Now that, more than anything else, filled him with a cold shudder of revulsion.

  “How’d you like to make a hundred bucks?” Weasel asked him.

  Sean scuffed a foot across the pavement and stared over Weasel’s shoulder, trying to pierce the dark interior of the van. “For both?” he asked, warily.

  Weasel laughed. “What, him? Naw. He just likes to watch. I don’t think he can even find his own dick. So—a hundred bucks?”

  Something about this seemed all wrong. He may have been new at this, but—

  “C’mon, don’t play hard to get. We just wanna have a little party, that’s all. Get you high. Get off. Don’t make us ask that guy.” Weasel jerked his chin toward the other hustler down the alley, the one with the pipe-burn sore.

  A hundred bucks and drugs? Sean lurched, but stopped himself before he took a full step forward. No rush, he told himself. There wasn’t any real chance of them picking up the tweaker.

  The alley mouth seemed to waver around the edges, that nice sweet underwater effect from the pill he’d railed.

  Weasel was small. If this went bad, Sean could take him easily. The guy in the driver’s seat . . . well, he was bigger, but Sean couldn’t picture him getting into a fight without getting out of breath or having a heart attack.

  “High on what?” he asked.

  “Life,” Weasel snorted sarcastically, rolling his eyes. “Whatever the fuck you want, kid. Get in.”

  “Okay,” Sean heard himself say. He did the exact opposite of focusing, and started turning off every single part of his mind that held him back from getting in the van. There were surprisingly many.

  Just stop thinking. Get in, get the money, and get out. It’ll all be fine.

  The painkiller rush helped to carry him along as he stepped forward and laid a hand on the edge of the door. Once he passed through, everything would become so much simpler. The screaming voice in the back of his mind would fall silent.

  He wondered what they’d want him to do. No, he didn’t wonder that.

  Close the door.

  So many fucking voices in his head. He blinked, and against his will, the world started to come back into focus. Did I just tell myself to close the door? He looked down at his hand, where it was hooked in the door’s outside handle. Time seemed to freeze right there, Weasel watching him with a wet-lipped half-open mouth. Sean’s hand—and not even his whole hand, only three fingertips—rested against the handle’s plastic grip. Sticky, like the phone. Fuck, he was higher than he’d thought. And someone else had told him to close the door.

  He looked Weasel right in the eyes—he swore he could count every single eyelash and pimple and strand of stubble on his face—and then he shut the door on him.

  It was like he’d stepped out of a vacuum. The whole world hissed with noise and reality rushed around him, through him, hitting him like a drug. The sound of the door rolling shut echoed in his ears.

  “Ahhh,” a man behind him said, a satisfied noise, drawing it out like a sigh. When Sean turned, it wasn’t the tweaker. It was the man from before, the one who’d been leaning against the telephone pole, the you better run guy. Sean recognized his hooded sweatshirt, one half brick-red, the other charcoal-black, the colors bisected by the zipper down his chest. The man swept the hood off his head, and Sean got his first look at his face.

  I know you. I know you from somewhere.

  In fact, he looked a little like . . . well, he looked a little like Sean actually, but not in any way he could pinpoint. Not the same nose, not the same brow, nothing like that. Just that vague similarity where you’d meet two people and find out afterward they were cousins, or half-siblings, or something, and then it would all make sense. Jet-black hair, high cheekbones, and snide, intelligent eyes set wide but not deep. He wasn’t Anglo white, but Sean couldn’t tell past that. He remembered the pimp: Whatever da fuck you is.

  “You had me worried there,” the man said. Sean couldn’t pinpoint an accent, either. It was seriously throwing him off. He’d been all over, met people from all over. He wasn’t used to this.

  The van rolled away. Sean almost didn’t notice it go.

  “Who the fuck are you?” The second Sean spat that out, he regretted it. That fallback animosity. He wasn’t sure why he regretted it, but he did.

  “Didn’t you hear a voice in the back of your head telling you that something wasn’t right? You should have listened.” The words were strung together soft and sure, and they carried no other emotion than a little honest sadness. No I told you so lurking underneath, no patronizing tone.

  Sean’s nose curled regardless. “Wait, wait, let me guess. Youth outreach worker. Missionary. Naw, not enough of a stick up your ass. Let’s go with the first one.”

  “You’ve got to trust your first instincts with a client, sometimes. Especially if you’re working the street.”

  “Oh God, you’re some kind of . . . I don’t know. Prostitute agent.” Did that even exist?

  The man laughed. A musical sound, not loud, that blended into the spaces between the other sounds of the night. Instead of infuriating Sean, it made him want to join in. The black comedy of his life was long overdue for some laughter.

  “No, nothing like that. I’ll explain. But first, what’s your name?”

  “Sean.” He swallowed the rest of his name, but he’d wanted to say it. Instead, working on instinct, he slipped into Spanish. “Oye, ¿de dónde eres?”

  “Nací en el otro lado. Ahora vivo en esta ciudad. Me llamo Ángel.” Born on the other side? Now that was a fucking strange way to say you were Cuban, but that was what he had to be. Or at least with family from some Caribbean country. The way the s sound growled out smooth and fluent from the back of his mouth struck Sean as deeply familiar. Reassuring, even.

  “Ángel.” Sean made sure to say his name the proper way: AN-hel. “I, uh, actually don’t speak Spanish that well. Anymore. Did you end up here through Miami? I’m from all over Florida, I guess.”

  “I’ve been there,” said Ángel, noncommittal. “The river’s a few blocks away. Walk there with me? We can sit down. Talk some business. English is fine.”

  “Yeah,” Sean said. “Sure.”

  They walked together down to the river, Sean with his hands stuffed into his pockets, not quite sure how to project himself. Ángel was easy to walk with, at least. He didn’t move like he was in a rush, keeping only half a pace ahead as they threaded through the human traffic of the narrow, age-crumbled sidewalk. Sean felt like he could follow Ángel anywhere, and it wouldn’t even feel like following. More like floating along, maybe.

  Once they picked their way over the riverside railroad tracks, Sean looked up to see the black water of the Mississippi where it ended the city.

  “You should grow your hair out,” Ángel said, staring somewhere into the distance. “If you want to go through with this, I mean. That shaved look, you gotta be bigger to pull that off.”

  “I’m six feet tall,” Sean said as he sat down on a stone block. He wasn’t angry, just lodging a reasonable objection. “Who were those guys in the kidnap van, anyway? You were right, something was off.”

  “I didn’t mean tall, did I?” Half of Ángel’s mouth crooked into a smile. “And I’m always right. Faster you learn that, longer you live. Those two? You don’t want the drugs they’d give you.”

  Sean shrugged. He didn’t like to think too hard about his past mistakes, whether five years old or five minutes. “You got anything better? Hook me up, man.”

  Ángel produced a thin, gorgeously cylindrical joint. When he lit it, the flame flared between his cu
pped fingers, casting out curved cracks of light.

  “So here’s what I’m thinking,” Ángel said, then sucked hard on the joint. He passed it over, jaw rigid as he held in a lungful. He exhaled as Sean inhaled, a perfect rhythm shared between them. “You need to respect yourself more. Value yourself higher.”

  Sean narrowed his eyes suspiciously.

  “You’re hot, I mean. Way too hot to be slumming it in some back alley and jumping into windowless vans.” Ángel’s appreciation was cool and clinical. Even so, Sean felt a strange thrill tingle through his gut.

  “Are you a . . .” He trailed off, not even wanting to say a name that would make Ángel into something cheap.

  “Yeah,” Ángel replied. “I’m an escort. Completely independent. Screen my own clients, set my own schedule. Keep one hundred percent. I only need to work a few nights a week.”

  “Wow.” That was a stupid-ass thing to say, but he couldn’t help it; he was impressed. Ángel wasn’t much older than him, early twentysomething, and he seemed so put together. Self-contained. But he was still reaching out, helping Sean, like an older brother would. Fuck, that wasn’t right. He shook his head and felt his eyeballs jiggling in their sockets.

  “Cool. Guess you can afford the good weed. This is nice.”

  Ángel turned to him, squinting as he drew deep on the joint. He leaned in. Blew a lazy coil of smoke against Sean’s mouth and nose. Reflexively, Sean breathed in, deep and slow and strangely audible. The marijuana hypnosis hit hard, his whole body coming undone at the seams.

  “You think this is nice?” Ángel challenged, interrupting Sean’s wave of unreality.

  He blinked rapidly, as if he could fan the fog out of his head. “So you’re loaded. S-so what?” There was an embarrassing stutter in his voice. “What’s it got to do with me? I’m guessing you didn’t bring me down here just to brag.”

  Ángel smiled. “We can help each other out. I need a partner for a client. A repeat customer of mine. Clean, pays well, but knows what he wants. And what he wants . . .” He blinked. Sean watched his eyes close in slow motion and felt himself breathe in time, like his whole body, his whole existence, was tied to Ángel’s. “. . . Is a threesome.”

  “Yeah, okay.” Well, that wasn’t exactly surprising or taboo enough to warrant the buildup.

  “With brothers,” Ángel added.

  “So like . . .” Sean looked out to the river, where a plastic shopping bag was floating downstream.

  “So like,” Ángel imitated, “two men who have a parent in common. You know, brothers. I know it’s a little weird, but in this business, you have to be willing to get a little weird, you know? I don’t even fucking have a brother, but I can’t lose this guy. Steady clients are gold. Got to improvise.”

  “And you just figured you’d find a seedy back alley in the hopes of spotting a hustler who looked enough like you to pass?” It was a lot more than a little weird. All of it: the client’s fucked-up fetish, Ángel’s calculating and totally unfazed response, the fact that he and Ángel did actually look a little like brothers, or at least half-brothers. And more than that, he felt like a brother, somehow. And seeing as Sean didn’t even have any siblings (that he knew of, anyway), just what kind of alternate reality was he even drawing on where he had the life experience to come to the conclusion that Ángel was “like a brother”?

  “This is fucked up,” he said.

  “So say no.”

  “How much?” Sean didn’t like the challenge in Ángel’s tone, the implication that he didn’t have the balls.

  “Five hundred for half a night,” Ángel said, like it was his fucking weekly allowance. “Each.”

  “Wow,” Sean said before he could stop himself.

  “Well, in this business, you pay a premium for that kind of fucked-up shit. You should see how much I charge for daddy kink. The kind you need costumes for.” He laughed, and Sean couldn’t help but join him. He didn’t know what it said about him, about Ángel, about this whole fucking city, that Sean didn’t look down on Ángel for doing that kind of depraved shit. In fact, he kind of admired him, like it was some kind of achievement.

  “I guess ‘daddy kink’ is self-evident?” he said when he’d stopped laughing.

  When Ángel looked at him, his eyes were twinkling. Which was odd, because Sean didn’t think they were in that kind of light.

  “You’re cute,” Ángel said, slightly patronizing, but Sean took it as a compliment anyway. “We should tell him you’re a virgin.” A pause. “Are you? A virgin?”

  “What? Shut up.” Sean shoved him playfully on the shoulder.

  “It doesn’t matter. We’re selling illusions. Dreams. Anything you say can be true.”

  “What if I’m not a good enough actor? I mean, pretending to be a virgin, that’s a pretty big jump.”

  He was joking, but Ángel answered seriously. “Doesn’t matter. He’s not hung up on the details. Just like he won’t ask for birth certificates, because he knows they won’t tell him anything he wants to see. They want to believe it, so they do. Who wants to pay a thousand bucks just to cockblock himself?”

  Sean felt a very unwelcome nervousness curdle inside him. “So what do we do? I mean . . .”

  Ángel shrugged. “I put down the ground rules. After that, whatever he asks us to do. If it’s too weird, I ask him to up the payment, or else I tell him to fuck himself. I’ll look out for you.”

  I’ll look out for you. He said it so matter-of-factly, like it was no big deal. But it was a big deal to Sean. He swallowed the lump in his throat and silenced the voice inside him that told him to say no, that had been screaming before but now barely whimpered.

  “Okay, I’m in.”

  Ángel had one of those old-world places in the most touristy part of the French Quarter, a little airy apartment chopped out of a mansion wing, balcony lined with hand-wrought black iron. He must be paying a fortune in rent, proving he definitely made the kind of money he’d promised. A midnight blue velveteen couch took up most of one wall; it looked well-worn, but clean. Sean sank down into its welcome softness, sprawling his arms out.

  “This place is swank as fuck,” he said.

  “Thanks.” Ángel shrugged off his hoodie and hung it next to the door, on a hook made from the same twisted black iron as the balcony. Sean always noticed those. They were old and beautiful, that must be why. “Don’t get too comfortable. We’ve got a lot of work to do before we head out.”

  “We do?” Sean sat up, resting his elbows on his knees. Apparently Ángel meant business. He’d been hoping they could just hang out for a while, smoke some more weed. Maybe get to know him better.

  “You looked at yourself recently?”

  “I thought you said I was hot,” Sean complained, and put on a fake wounded look. “That’s not good enough, I need grooming too? Just hose me off and I’m good to go.”

  “Ha ha. Ready to hit that alley of yours once the clubs let out, maybe. Look, rich gay men have higher personal care standards. There are exceptions, but— Never mind. Come on, I’ll show you the bathroom.”

  The bathroom was tight and old-fashioned, with a claw-foot tub, gilded-frame mirror, and a floor laid with a tiny checkerboard of black and white tiles. Ángel lined up a row of bottles, working gracefully and methodically as he explained each substance in its proper order. Sean was still pretty buzzed, and he didn’t catch all of it, instructions like “half a capful of the eau de toilette” melting into “pomade something something.”

  Ángel paused, his eyebrows tightening a little.

  Sean blinked. Shook his head. “Sorry,” he said. He didn’t want to be a disappointment. “Could you go over that last part again?”

  “Okay,” said Ángel, marvelously patient. “The disposable enema is in the cupboard right there. If you’ve never used one before? Not rocket science. There’s an instruction sheet with a diagram. Tab A into slot B is about the gist of it.”

  “A what?”

  “Disposa
ble. Enema. You want this money, you use it. And then you brush your teeth and floss them. Don’t bother getting dressed when you’re done in here. Any questions?” Ángel gave him a pitch-perfect long-suffering look.

  “I, uh, where’s the floss again?”

  Ángel pointed wordlessly. Sean searched for some undercurrent of approval in the gesture, because damn, this was getting scary.

  Ángel’s expression softened, and he dropped a hand onto Sean’s shoulder, cupping it gently. His thumb swept back and forth, back and forth.

  “You don’t have to do this. If you don’t want to. Look, you’re a nice kid. I’ll give you some money, enough to eat the next couple days. You can even crash on the couch tonight, if you want. Just say the word.”

  God, Sean wanted to take him up on the offer. “I . . .” he tightened his hands into fists. Five hundred dollars. Cristina. “Can’t. I wanna do this. I’ll do everything you said. It’s not that hard.”

  Ángel waited, not moving his hand, his sad regard sweeping over Sean.

  “I know it seems like . . . like I’m a mess. But I can follow through. You can trust me. You’ll see.”

  “We’ll talk after you get yourself ready in here, Sean.”

  It was the first time he remembered Ángel saying his name. Then Ángel was gone, and the bathroom door clicked softly shut behind him.

  Sean touched his own shoulder as the checkerboard tiles swirled slow and stately around his feet like leaves in a river current. The weed was nice, sure, but he needed something that went deeper and stronger. He started the shower. Gathered the right bottles into his hands while the mist rose. He was an alchemist—selling dreams, making it happen. Everything would be all right.

  Ángel was waiting for him on the couch with a mug of coffee when he emerged. Sean, wearing nothing but one of Ángel’s fluffy white towels, lifted his arms, palms out, and did a spin.

  “Oh God,” Ángel groaned. He set the coffee aside, distracted.

  “Aw, c’mon, what now, man?” Sean stopped mid-turn, arms flopping dejectedly to his sides. “I did everything you asked.” Everything.